hibidy wrote:Oh no, I hope that isn't what people thought I was implying. I'm just saying that there are too many rules. Should be the best sounding mix wins, not everything has to fit such a specific anal set of rules that you'll be the weakest link before you even get started

The idea is to simulate a real job. If someone spends 3 weeks working on a mix, makes dramatic changes to the music without consent of the client, turns in an unfinished mix, or turns in a mix that's not fit for mastering, that's not real world.

As we've been developing this, I've been thinking to myself "what would Chris Lord-Alge do?" with regards to any scenario that's come up. Unfortunately, "what would Chris Lord-Alge do?" isn't exactly a rule that communicates the same message to everybody. Poor Compy looks like the bad guy but all he's doing is laying out the rules with detail and clarity so that it doesn't become a subjective mess like my single "what would Chris Lord-Alge do" rule would cause.

At the same time, we want this to be inclusive and fun. We want people to be involved and learn from the experience. The rules are good and I don't want to change them but I would appreciate if you guys could help us word and format the rules in such a way that makes them less daunting or seemingly difficult. The rules aren't difficult but they are specific, and I understand how specificity can occur as being difficult sometimes.

For my own mix, I went WAY outside of my comfort zone because I want to see how voters feel about the new techniques I implemented (if my mix ends up ranking high, I'll begin implementing those techniques into my normal workflow and will hopefully one day get good with them). That's pretty cool, it's not something I can do in my normal life and I hope others take advantage of this contest in similar ways.

I suggest you take the simplified rules above and use them as the official rules. They are simple, short and to the point, and easy to understand. The really long post of official rules is rather intimidating. It is good background/supplementary material, and should be available, but not in the post about the competition.

Your comment about not being certain of summarizing every rule is telling.

I am terribly excited about this competition. The song NineOfKings submitted has been a joy to mix. I hope to get my submission in soon.

Btw, I think we should not have any prizes, nor any rules about voting beyond the minimum post count. I will never submit to the OSC because of the heavy burden of rules.

It should not be easy to be disqualified from any casual competition here at KVR. We already have too much stress in our real lives.

Rules are for school and work, and laws are for an orderly society; we should be having fun here.

Thank you and Uncle E for all your work so far. I think there is potential here to be an enduring contribution to the KVR culture.

Uncle E wrote:...we want this to be inclusive and fun. We want people to be involved and learn from the experience.

If that is the case then you shot yourself in the foot from the outset. Masses of rules do not = 'inclusive and fun'. Let people mix how they want to and, if someone has gone wildly 'wrong' then perhaps give that person advice on a case by case basis. I've taken part in loads of mix comps all over the 'net and not once have I seen rules like this imposed. In fact, if learning is the goal then I would argue that a competition is not really the right scenario.

Once again, they are NOT masses of rules. They are only written in long form - which seems to be a boner-killer for most people. (sorry for this language, I'm a lil' bit pissed right now - will get to that in a minute).

Other challenges and competitions have similar rules. Heck I was recently contacted about a songwriting contest by VSL, and their three main rules are: you have to pay a fee of 30USD, you must not use anything else as primary instruments other than VSL libraries, the main focus of the songwriting competition is orchestral arrangement.

THAT are clear limitations that are massive turn offs.

If I write that we have a time limit, a certain loudness guideline and that you shall NOT resubmit twice, but else you have hands free as long as you don't change the rearrangement... suddenly that's too f*cking much. And hibidy, you still haven't answered my Q "why" these rules are too f*cking much for you. Then again - don't care anymore at this point.

I will sit down over the course of the weekend, since I've got nothing else to do anymore (again, I will get to that in a minute), and I will(!) create a dedicated thread with the rules. In short form, in long form, with links to possible video tutorials, with "backlogs" of the competitions and what not. Don't like it, don't participate. That simple.

I can totally forget at this point that I can join this challenge. Why? Because some idiot <insert very bad course word here> injected my page with a trojan, and my web provider was all like "let's hit the nuke button". I needed a new page anyway, but I kind of postponed it.

So whoever that asshole was, I now have to focus on OTHER THINGS and to get back my life line in terms of getting jobs/deals, rather than join a mix challenge for sh*ts and giggles. So much for arranging myself some spare time for this. Now I have to waste that on maintenance, anti-virus searches, reinstalls and a sh*tload of paper work that is also piling up on my desk.

Compyfox wrote:Once again, they are NOT masses of rules. They are only written in long form - which seems to be a boner-killer for most people. (sorry for this language, I'm a lil' bit pissed right now - will get to that in a minute).{/quote]

Other challenges and competitions have similar rules. Heck I was recently contacted about a songwriting contest by VSL, and their three main rules are: you have to pay a fee of 30USD, you must not use anything else as primary instruments other than VSL libraries, the main focus of the songwriting competition is orchestral arrangement.

THAT are clear limitations that are massive turn offs.

If I write that we have a time limit, a certain loudness guideline and that you shall NOT resubmit twice, but else you have hands free as long as you don't change the rearrangement... suddenly that's too f*cking much. And hibidy, you still haven't answered my Q "why" these rules are too f*cking much for you. Then again - don't care anymore at this point.

I will sit down over the course of the weekend, since I've got nothing else to do anymore (again, I will get to that in a minute), and I will(!) create a dedicated thread with the rules. In short form, in long form, with links to possible video tutorials, with "backlogs" of the competitions and what not. Don't like it, don't participate. That simple.

I can totally forget at this point that I can join this challenge. Why? Because some idiot <insert very bad course word here> injected my page with a trojan, and my web provider was all like "let's hit the nuke button". I needed a new page anyway, but I kind of postponed it.

So whoever that asshole was, I now have to focus on OTHER THINGS and to get back my life line in terms of getting jobs/deals, rather than join a mix challenge for sh*ts and giggles. So much for arranging myself some spare time for this. Now I have to waste that on maintenance, anti-virus searches, reinstalls and a sh*tload of paper work that is also piling up on my desk.

Have fun, people.I just lost mine.

It seems to me you have a desire for everyone to be mixing the 'correct' way. That is perfectly fine and admirable. But... I say let people make their own mistakes. That's the ONLY true way of learning anything. If you tell a bunch of inexperienced people the right way to mix ie. the 'correct' way to gain stage, the 'correct' meter readings to indicate a 'good' mix with good headroom etc. then that's fine but don't penalise them for not sticking to it (or indeed being able to stick to it) - without the relevant experience it's all pretty meaningless anyway - they are going to make mistakes just learning what the information even means. Again, I say let people mix however the hell they want and then gently nudge people in the right direction if more experienced ears can hear problems. THAT is an inclusive way to run a competition among inexperienced mixers in my humble opinion. The fact that quite a few people are saying the rules are too complicated and you're getting angry tells me that A) You're not listening to what the people are saying and B) There seems to be some other agenda going on (that you want everyone to benefit from your experience and mix the 'correct' way - perfectly fine in principle but I don't think you can push that too heavily without sounding somewhat dictatorial).

Having said all of that... if the focus of the competition is PURELY as a competition to win prizes, prestige and all round head inflating then disregard my whole post. IF the focus is on learning then I don't think you can be too heavy on rules - I would say something like 'Mix however you want to, but for the best possible results you may want to read the following...*gain staging advice* *links to good articles about relevant subjects etc.*

Summed up, the "mix participant" rules for the MC are just as simple, if not simpler. And you're not forced to upload to SoundCloud, or sign up to a special page - EVERYONE can benefit from downloading your mix. No sign up needed, no restrictions.

No, I don't want any benefit from it, I do not have an agenda planned. I merely want people to stick to rules, realize how it might be in a "realistic oriented environment" and share their experience with the "documentation" rule.

And the rules are simple IMO! Though some users broke them, since they were like "TL;DR - don't care, let's roll!". But it's okay for the other challenges/competitions that are also just for sh*ts and giggles, but happen to also offer free goods.

Actually... do you people know why the LAST mix challenge failed?

Because it lacked rules, it didn't stick to time limits. It lacked certain guidelines to stay on common ground, it wasn't thought through. And the former challenge experiment involved a "mix engineer" as "ultimate final word". I found that absolutely stupid. Eric and I talked about this idea in PM form, and we ultimately rejected it. The users can decide which mix sounds the best.

Granted, this is still subjective (as is everything that involves songwriting and mixing). But what do you want? An ultimate answer by "x-engineer" that then says "you have to do it this and that way" in the end? This is what is now flinged at me as criticism. Or do you want to have fun while mixing. But still get the change to get free tools that might make your workflow a little bit easier in the future?

Apparently, even saying "you have creative freedom" was wrong!Seriously?!

On one hand, if you make a challenge for sh*ts and giggles, nobody gives a dime. If you involve sponsors (which people kind of expect - like "why should we waste our time for this?!"), suddenly the rules are too strict (which are still needed to be fair to everyone!). But looking at both the OSC and SWC - they seem to work!

Is this some personal sh*t or what?!Am I living in some sort of galactic rift or something?

I mean, you Android of all people joined the game and didn't even seem to have a problem with that. You even ACCEPTED that you were disqualified. You said that the rules are fair - now you're saying that they're not working if people want to "learn" anything?!

People can't learn if they do whatever the f*ck they want! Why else were there books written about the various topics of audio engineering (though some of them are really narrow minded)? Why else are there still some engineers trying to teach how to do it in a possible better way compared to x-audio engineering school?! Yes, I count myself to that small fraction.

Again, the OSC and SWC rules are just as strict, if not even more limited. Nobody cares - the challenges/competitions are still running (OSC runs for over 63 months now!). And folks bark up my tree because I said "oh wait... I recommend you not to submit within the first 24 hours, the general loudness shall not exceed this and that level, no rearrangements, no reuploads, and it is mandatory to write at least a couple of sentences what you did."?

I - don't - get - it - !And I don't want to even at this point.

I merely set up some ideas, some guidelines. Inspired by both the real world, with the current KVR challenges in mind, and with a spike of "fun and games" mixed with "let's add some learning factor in there". I invested a sh*tload more time into it than I originally planned. At this stage, I am the headmaster and not Eric. That alone kills all the fun for me.

Add to that, my current sh*t day with my hacked page... I think it's better to log off for the rest of the weekend.

Compyfox wrote:I mean, you Android of all people joined the game and didn't even seem to have a problem with that. You even ACCEPTED that you were disqualified. You said that the rules are fair - now you're saying that they're not working if people want to "learn" anything?!

The rules are fair for me because I understand them. All the gain staging rules might be hard to stick to for newcomers. I'm going to butt out at this point - maybe I've been poking my nose in too far already.

ffs compy, chill out. I voiced my opinion and I'm not going to write two pages of stuff answering every little single detail. Personal? Are you kidding, why would it be personal? I'm sorry you are having computer issues, I hope they get solved but personal? Oy vay.....

Hibidy, there's nothing to bow out of, the argument you created is moot. People participating in the mix challenge need to follow the rules or get DQed, and that's it. As far as people learning something from the experience, that's another argument completely.

My advice to anyone who thinks the metering is "offcenter" is to just gain your track once it's finished to the right level, and don't limit, and everything's cool. It's not a loudness competition, that's the mastering competition's idea.

camsr wrote:My advice to anyone who thinks the metering is "offcenter" is to just gain your track once it's finished to the right level, and don't limit, and everything's cool. It's not a loudness competition, that's the mastering competition's idea.

This is good. Part of the learning experience is learning how to meter and present a proper mixdown to a mastering engineer (we're envisioning a follow-up mastering challenge that will run concurrently with the next mix challenge). However, if you don't want to learn proper metering, just be sane with your compression settings (especially on the main buss) and lower your master fader -3 at the time of exporting, you should be able to stay roughly within the guidelines of the competition that way.

The nice thing about this first mix challenge is that the song's arrangement is just about impossible to get over -18dB RMS average. My channel compressors are all SMASHED and I probably would have gotten into trouble if the arrangement were fuller. If someone gives us a clubfloor banger loaded with pre-compressed Vengeance and NI drum samples, we'll need to be more careful.